The Memory Chest Chapter 14: A Time for Work and Play, a harry potter fanfic

Harry woke quite late the next day. He used the larger kitchen of Grimmauld place, deciding to start making better use of the house, and made himself a breakfast of bacon, eggs, and muffins.

Hedwig landed on his plate, obviously upset with him for neglecting her.

"Sorry girl," he soothed, feeding the indignant owl a crispy rasion of bacon. "I promise I'll try to have lots for you to do soon."

Tonks arrived just as Hedwig appeared to decide Harry had paid enough attention to her and flew off into the recesses of the house.

"Wotcher, Harry," she said, sitting down the table and stealing a muffin. "Ta, luv, I'm starved. I didn't get out of the Burrow till five o'clock this morning - bloody stragglers."

"Who's a bloody straggler?" asked Ron, as he stumbled into the kitchen and helped himself to the other half of Harry's muffin.

"Your brothers, Charlie and the twins, that's who. Kept those old school girl friends of Fleur's going until five o'clock this morning. Only reason they didn't nick off to somewhere else was because they were too drunk to find the edge of the anti-apparition wards, or to clearly say the name of the nightclub they wanted to Floo to.

"Why did you have to stay?" Harry asked her.

"Had the nightshift and it was more fun than going home, especially when Fred and George finally figured out who I was, but didn't tell Charlie."

Hermione walked in as they were laughing about Charlie's antics.

"Any spare eggs?" she asked, eyeing Harry's breakfast.

"Here," he said, pushing the plate he had not actually touched over to her. "I'll get myself another one."

"Thanks, Harry," she said, digging into the food without a second thought.

"Well, while you are at it..." said Remus, walking in to join them.

Harry ended up cooking an enormous breakfast for the five of them. The previous nights celebrating had obviously taken its toll, and Lupin was still on a come back from the last full moon which had been a very rough one on the aging werewolf.

They swapped stories about the party and compared notes on the various events, people and clothes. Harry mentioned spotting three Aurors, and described what they were wearing to Tonks when she quizzed him on them.

"That's very good, Harry," she said. "You only missed one, which is impressive because they weren't new recruits, but seasoned undercover operatives."

Hermione had seen all four, of course, and identified at least two people who had been Aurors, or their foreign equivalents, prior to retiring.

Ron hadn't noticed much of anything, except Fleur's dress, or lack of it, and the perfume that Hermione had been wearing.

"Because I gave it to her ages ago," he said proudly.

"So what's the plan for today, kids?" Lupin asked, after watching Harry levitate the plates to the sink to be magically scrubbed.

"Don't know about you, but think I am going to just laze around and recover," Ron told them.

"I second the motion," said Tonks. "All in favour?"

Their resounding 'ayes' echoed through the room, and so it came to be that a day of rest and general mucking about was declared.

Harry still wanted to practice spell casting, but nobody else felt like duelling, and he definitely didn't want to do more cleaning, so he grabbed the two dolls that came with the dollhouse and transfigured a table and some string into a miniature wrestling ring, just like the ones he had seen on Dudley's favourite television show.

Explaining the rules of modern wrestling, or lack of them, he and Ron set about animating the dolls and conducting them in brutal fighting rounds. Points were awarded for each knock down, extra points for following up a knock down with some sort of attack of opportunity, and top points for dismembering the opponent, ejecting them from the ring, or both.

Ron was unhappy about having the female doll, so he transfigured it into a man so heavily muscled that it hardly looked human and tended to fall over a lot, until it's feet were expanded to ridiculous proportions.

Hermione called the sport barbaric, starting an argument with Ron about the merits of professional brutality, but then she transfigured an empty tin into a man of steel and proceeded to annihilate them both until they ganged up on her.

Tonks and Remus came to investigate the noise and ended up entering their own champions. Lupin turned an old duster into a furry man that tended to try to bite everyone and kept stopping to howl at the sky, and Tonks made an old shoe into a fighter that could bend over backwards and twist into anatomically impossible angles, making it very difficult to defeat.

The ensuing chaos as they played all on all and mixed team matches meant that not a lot of resting was undertaken at all that day, but nobody complained.

Tonks and Lupin returned a few times over the next few days to help the trio setup a shooting range and duelling area in the fourth bedroom where Ron and Harry had been practicing. The tale of Ron and Harry hanging upside down and unarmed had been just too good for the pair to keep to themselves, and Tonks suggested turning the room into a more appropriate practice area.

The room was greatly expanded, with the trio learning the spells as they were being cast, and various barriers and mats were transfigured.

Hermione created life sized busts that floated in the shooting gallery, modelling it on an advanced Muggle police academy she had once visited. Tonks was very impressed declaring that it was the equal of anything in the Auror training academy, except the ones there fired back. That of course made Hermione want to rush off to find the right spells to make that happen, but she managed to contain her competitiveness and accepted her work as acceptable.

Harry and Lupin worked on creating exercise machines similar to the ones in Dudley's gym. They doubted the painful looking devices, would ever get much use, but having them on hand meant it was an option.

Tonks spent a lot of time reinforcing the roof, floor and walls with spells and wards. She showed them a few of the simpler ones and they helped finish protecting the much expanded room from stray magic or debris.

Hermione again threw herself back into researching Regulus and the Horcruxes. She was certain there would be spells that they could use to locate the Horcruxes, and clues about where they might be hiding.

As often as not, Harry and Ron would put the practice room through its paces, preferring to work up a sweat rather than a headache.

Everybody agreed it was a bad idea having Harry show up anywhere near the Daily Prophet, especially with Percy still making regular appearances at the Ministry, so Ron was forced to take numerous trips with Hermione to their offices, as well as museums and libraries, to hunt through dusty old issues from around the time Regulus was murdered. Unfortunately, that meant Harry was left alone at Grimmauld Place for long stretches to brood.